Dover runner, son questioning how they narrowly missed explosions

DOVER — Like many of the runners and spectators who walked away from this year's Boston Marathon unscathed, Robert Huggins and his son have spent the last day pondering the “What if ...” questions.

By Jim Haddadinjhaddadin@fosters.com

DOVER — Like many of the runners and spectators who walked away from this year's Boston Marathon unscathed, Robert Huggins and his son have spent the last day pondering the “What if ...” questions.

What if Huggins had started the race five minutes earlier? What if he had run a little bit slower? Would a tail wind have changed his fate on Monday afternoon?

The circumstances could have been even more dire for 18-year-old Ziggy Huggins, his son. Ziggy chose to walk away from the finish line only moments before a bomb exploded on Boylston Street, spraying shrapnel into a crowd of spectators.

Robert Huggins had finished the race only about five minutes earlier. His son, who believed his father had likely already crossed the finish line, departed before the bombing, heading toward the John Hancock Tower, the pair's designated meeting spot. About 30 seconds after he turned around, the first bomb detonated, sending bodies sprawling to the ground. Had he not turned around, the Dover High School senior would have been walking through the blast zone at that moment.

A few hundred yards away, 52-year-old Robert Huggins was already winding down from his sixth Boston Marathon run. Huggins was trying to beat his personal record, so he picked up the pace this year, finishing the race at 2:44 p.m. and 36 seconds.

He had just retrieved a water bottle and Mylar blanket when he heard the first blast. A cloud of smoke cloud filled the street, and Huggins' mind began racing once again — this time, concentrating on the whereabouts of his son.

He traveled to the John Hancock tower, but Ziggy was nowhere to be found. Robert Huggins borrowed a cell phone from someone on the street and tried contacting his son, but the call went straight to his voice mail.

Robert Huggins walked back toward the finish line, where he was recruited to help clear the cases of water from the road to make way for the caravan of ambulances arriving to transport victims.

Near the back of a medical tent, Huggins watched as one man was carried away on a body board, blood flowing from his eyes. Another woman with a bandaged hand was hugging her two young sons. Her face was twisted with grief.

Huggins was finally reunited with his son a few minutes later outside the Hancock Tower. On the ride home to Dover, Huggins said he began contemplating the factors that conspired to keep his son away from the blast zone. In the end, he said, it might have been nothing more than random chance that allowed his son to escape injury.

“I just feel bad, you know, thinking about all the people that were there, and seeing them getting loaded into ambulances,” he said. “It could have been him. It could have been me. It could have been any of us.”